Amazon Unbox, Now Playing on TiVo

Amazon’s Unbox video-on-demand service will make the leap out of the PC box and into the TV box via a partnership with TiVo, the two companies said in an emailed press release. Subscribers to both Unbox and TiVo will be able to rent and purchase movies and television shows from Amazon and download them directly to their TiVos.

Getting onto television sets is key breakthrough for an online video-on-demand service, thought to be key to achieving widespread popularity. However, the computer is not completely out of the equation with the Unbox-TiVo partnership; users will not yet be able to make purchases directly through their TVs, according to Reuters.

The service is now in beta testing and will be available to 1.5 million broadband-ready TiVo boxes “soon.” This is a plum feature for Amazon, whose offering hadn’t exactly dazzled on its debut in September. But later entrants from Netflix and Wal-Mart, which launched Monday, have continued to lack portability features.

Early leader Apple has yet to make it all the way to the couch, pending the release of its supposedly delayed Apple TV. Still, that box will not have access to iTunes, meaning you might have to get up off your butt to download movies. And we can’t have that!